Two ISPs from New Zealand reported that the controversial three strikes copyright law resulted in dropping traffic since it came into force, beginning with September.

ISP Orcon said that international traffic into the country dropped by about 10. ISP TelstraClear also reported a drop in traffic, although it could not confirm whether it is related to the law.

The controversial law is yet to yield lawsuits but New Zealand authorities instated fines as high as NZ$15,000 for repeat offenders. There is also an option to deprive these persons of Internet access for up to six months.

It has been said that the traffic drop is modest, especially seeing as how Swedish traffic dropped by 30 percent after a strict copyright bill was instated.

The UN has accused Britain, France and New Zealand of abusing human rights by bringing in three strikes laws against P2P file-sharers.

United Nations Human Rights Council has released a new report on the state of online free speech around the world. As you would expect he called attention to long-standing censorship problems in China, Iran, and other oppressive regimes, but then waded into so-called free democracies "three strikes" laws.

In France, Britain you can be booted off the Internet for repeated copyright infringement. Frank La Rue, whose official title is "Special Rapporteur said he is "deeply concerned" about proposals to create a centralised system for cutting people off from Internet access as a punishment for copyright infringement. Cutting off Internet access as a response to copyright infringement is "disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," he said.

He notes that Internet disconnection language has been removed from recent drafts of the ACTA treaty, but writes that he "remains watchful about the treaty’s eventual implications for intermediary liability and the right to freedom of expression."

The French government is probably regretting surrendering to the entertainment industry and bringing in a three-strikes law against file-sharers.

According to Billboard.biz French labels are sending 25,000 complaints a day to Hadopi, the agency enforcing that country's "three strikes" law. Quite how it is researching the names of all these file sharers is anyone's guess and it is not clear if they are providing enough “evidence” to switch users off.

The entertainment industry hopes that the threat of being disconnected will force legal digital sales will go up, and alleged infringements will go down. However with that many complaints going through the system and the fact that one-click downloading sites such as Rapidshare are not covered it is looking like the French have created a mess.

The law allows Hadopi to, following a complaint, track down the user in question, initiate a warning process, and ultimately boot the consumer off his or her ISP. But if HADOPI is looking at all these complaints it is moving very slowing to deal with them.

Billboard said that the agency fears its hotline would be overloaded by people calling after having received a warning, or by people protesting at the HADOPI system. Since few people have called the hotline it appears HADOPI is not going after the 25,000 complaints a day.